Boyd Morrison: The Man, The Myth, The (Moderate) Madness, The Manuscript!

Bestselling author, NASA guy, game-design guy, Jeopardy! champion guy, acting guy, and occasional bungee jumper–Boyd Morrison would seem to have it all, except the Aston-Martin and the License To Kill (which as a Yankee he’d have trouble prying from Her Majesty anyway).  You can check out all the amazing-but-true details at his own web site.  He was a busy man last year with a new book and a new old book (see below), but he took a few minutes out to discuss his busy life via an online interview.

Your newest book The Catalyst is also your oldest (published) book, The Adamas Blueprint.  How did the book gestate, the first time?  What are the major differences between the two versions?  What lessons did you learn from reworking older material?

I got the idea for The Catalyst around the time I was finishing up the dissertation for my PhD. Hitchcockian conspiracies have always been a favorite, especially North By Northwest, so I wondered what if a similar situation happened to me? What if assassins were trying to kill me, but I didn’t know why? And what if the reason was related to my seemingly innocuous research? That premise got me off and running with the story.

Because I finished the book in 1996, Google, Facebook, and smart phones were still science fiction. But in the last fifteen years those technologies have become intertwined with our everyday lives. In the revision process I found plenty of sections in the book where my characters were desperately searching for a paper phone book or going to extremes to find information that would be literally at our fingertips today. In some cases I had to completely rework the plot to account for these technological advances.

When I first started writing, my characters were simple folk whose motivations didn’t always make sense. I was more intent on the plot at that point. The revision process let me apply some real-life seasoning to the how the characters act and react in the book.

Your most recent Tyler Locke adventure, The Vault, has quite a bit to do with gold, and also the upper performance limits of various luxury cars.  How did you go about doing your research?  Which parts did you enjoy the most and which felt like slog?

As it did for my characters in The Catalyst, Google has completely revamped how I go about my research. In hours I was able to gather photos and descriptions of objects and locations that would have taken weeks in a library. In one case I was able to completely map out a car chase in New York City using the Google street view app so that I took the exact same route my characters did. However, I do still read a ton of nonfiction books on the subjects I’m researching, and I talk about some of them in the afterword of The Vault.

Of course, actually visiting locations is preferable when I can do it, and for The Vault I traveled to England, Germany, Greece, and Italy. As you mentioned, there is a scene on the Autobahn near Munich where a Lamborghini is in a high-speed pursuit of a Ferrari. To make sure I got the details right, I rented an Audi and drove the same route at 150 mph. It was definitely a thrill, but I don’t think I blinked the entire time.

The slog isn’t in the research, it’s actually plotting out the story so that it makes sense. Writing a 100,000-word story takes months, and some days I just don’t know how I’m going to get myself out of a plot hole. I always come up with something eventually, but boy are those days frustrating.

What valuable lessons are you learning about Tyler Locke as you go on making him up?

My favorite description of Tyler Locke was from a reviewer who called him a combination of Indiana Jones and MacGyver. Tyler, a mechanical engineer with a degree from MIT, went into the Army after college and served in a combat engineering battalion where he specialized as a demolitions expert. Now he’s chief engineer at a private consulting firm and continually gets roped into adventures in which he solves ancient puzzles while averting worldwide catastrophes.

Because I’m an engineer as well, I assumed that I had simply created Tyler a smarter, stronger, more daring version of myself. But when I looked back at his resume, I realized that he is, in fact, my father, an engineer who went to MIT, then joined the Army and fought in WWII as a soldier in the 10th Armored division, and became a chief engineer at a private firm after he left the military. It only took me writing three books to make that revelation.

The Space Station Freedom project you worked on was ultimately shelved.  Did any of the better bits make it into the International Space Station?  What were your responsibilities on the project, and how frustrated were you to see it canned?

The International Space Station is an amazing technological feat. At a cost of a hundred billion dollars, it’s the most expensive moving object ever built, and part of the reason is that the Congress completely redrafted the budget on it every year. While I was there, that meant we had to redo a significant amount of work to account for the cuts or changes, which was incredibly frustrating and time-consuming. But it’s fun seeing the space station in orbit today knowing that I had some small part in it. I worked primarily on the window and camera subsystems, which are critical for observing extravehicular activities and controlling the robotic arms.

Are you keeping up with your acting?  Any shows planned for 2012?  Is acting any more or less scary than bungee-jumping off the Kawarau Bridge?

When I get done with my current manuscript, there are several plays I want to audition for. I always get antsy if I’ve been away from the stage too long. Auditions are hit or miss, but I hope to get a few roles this year. Acting used to be scary, but the more I’ve done it, the more comfortable I’ve become. If you’ve done enough plays, every that can go wrong on stage has gone wrong, so you know you can handle pretty much anything that comes up. Bungee jumping, now that’s scary, especially after seeing the video of that Australian woman this week whose bungee cord snapped. Luckily she survived, but I might have had second thoughts if I’d seen that before I went.

What can we expect in 2012 and beyond, from you?  Has Hollywood come calling yet?

I’m just polishing the third Tyler Locke thriller, which will come out this summer. I’m under contract for Tyler Locke 4, so I’ll be starting work on that soon. I also have a half-completed standalone thriller that I’d like to finish this year.

No news about Hollywood yet, but I’d love to see my books on screen. Many of my readers tell me that the novels are cinematic and have already come up with ideas for casting. If they do get made into movies, my only requirement will be that I get a speaking role in the films.